Posted
by
timothy
on Wednesday July 22, 2009 @02:25PM
from the waiter-there's-a-fly-in-my-fighter dept.

BayaWeaver writes "Slate reports that the F-22 Raptor has been cancelled by the Senate. At an estimated price tag of $339 million per aircraft, even the powerful military-industrial-congressional complex couldn't keep this Cold War program alive in these hard times. They look very cool though and have appeared in movies like Hulk and Transformers. But not to worry too much about the future of the military-industrial-congressional complex: the F-35 Lightning II begins production next year!
As a side note, in 2007 a squadron of Raptors became deaf, dumb and blind when they flew over the International Date Line."

Reading the title and summary would make you think that the entire program has been cancelled and the planes aren't going to be used by the US military. This is not the case. The Senate reduced the number of aircraft being produced such that no additional planes will be made. The F22 is already in service and will remain in service for quite some time.

The cost is also a little misleading. Additional units cost ~$130M each (which is still expensive as hell), the $339M figure is total program cost plus build cost divided out per aicraft. That number only decreases the more we produce. So if we ordered another singe aircraft, it would not cost $339M.

The cost is also a little misleading. Additional units cost ~$130M each (which is still expensive as hell), the $339M figure is total program cost plus build cost divided out per aicraft. That number only decreases the more we produce. So if we ordered another singe aircraft, it would not cost $339M.

If that is the case then why don't we keep building them until they are free? As a bonus, we will have an unstoppable Air Force. Oh wait, we already did before the F-22.

The per unit cost is so high because, unlike past US-built fighters and the upcoming F-35, it is illegal to build an F-22 and sell it to another country, per Congressional mandate. Because there are no other customers available besides the US, and because the US has enough of them (for now), there's no way to take advantage of the economies of scale that could be brought to bear with continued production.

The other three fighter craft available to the USAF were commissioned in 1976 (F-15), 1978 (F-16), and 1988 (F-15E). I know that the F-15 (I assume it's the 1970s units) have been exhibiting structural failures that have cost the loss of several craft and the grounding of all units a couple of times in recent years. It would be pretty easy for a foreign power (Russia and China) to have a modern aircraft that can out perform something we designed and built 30+ years ago. Basically those three craft all need to be phased out in the next 10 years, leaving us with the F-22 (clearly superior to anything anybody else has), and the F-35 (which will be available to multiple countries, and therefore not superior), as well as the unmanned aircraft. The F-22 out-rates the F-35 by every metric, even though it will be 6 years older.

Anyway, the GP didn't claim that creating more would make the new craft free. But the billions spent to develop the F-22 can't be recouped. What's important is, going forward, is whether it's better to buy 2 F-22s, or 3 F-35s. Consider, with better planes, your pilot can cover more ground, which makes it less difficult to find the pilots necessary to man the aircraft in question, which means you have to find and train more pilots to man the extra planes, and extra planes will also require extra ground crew mechanics and engineers to maintain the planes.

If it's me, I would always choose to build more of the superior plane as long as the extra cost isn't too high, and I don't consider the extra cost to be too different in this case.

If it was any other plane I'd agree with you but these things barely get into the air before breaking down.

The F-14 did the same thing when it was first deployed until the Navy worked the bugs out of it. Once they did it was arguably the best carrier-borne air superiority aircraft of all time.

As with any complex system it's going to take time to fully integrate it and work the kinks out of the program. I don't pretend to know exactly how many F-22s we need but I do know that once you terminate production it's not a simple matter to start it back up again. That's why I said that we could find ourselves regretting this decision if we find ourselves in a conflict with an actual Great Power.

The F-14 did the same thing when it was first deployed until the Navy worked the bugs out of it. Once they did it was arguably the best carrier-borne air superiority aircraft of all time.

I'm blowing my mod points to respond, but I had to: The way things are going, the F-22 will never get the bugs worked out because it's NEVER been used in combat. According to the NYT article [nytimes.com]:

But the F-22 has never been used in war, and the Pentagon's focus has shifted to simpler weapons needed in Iraq and Afghanistan.

So great, we've already spent billions of dollars on a plane that is not helping us win the wars we are currently fighting. Fat lot of good it will do us to have incredible advantage to fight against China or someone else in the future if we lose our current wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. The time to stop worrying about the future is when it started impinging on your ability to cope with the present. The F-22 is designed for a war that hasn't happened, but for the price of ONE F-22 ($97 million), we can buy nearly NINE A-10 Warthogs ($11.7 million [wikipedia.org] each), which actually do help us win our current wars. The F-22 should have been canceled, and more so, 187 should never have been bought in the first place.

The military nearly always gears up to fight the last war, not the next one.
I'm waiting for an air to air combat drone that can kill Predators, etc. Once those are in the air there will be no manned fighters; their performance is utterly abysmal by comparison.

As with any complex system it's going to take time to fully integrate it and work the kinks out of the program. I don't pretend to know exactly how many F-22s we need but I do know that once you terminate production it's not a simple matter to start it back up again. That's why I said that we could find ourselves regretting this decision if we find ourselves in a conflict with an actual Great Power.

FTFA:

No U.S. soldier has been killed by an enemy aircraft since 1951.

Production of F-35s actually starts next year and... the FY 2010 budget contains money to build 30 of them. In other words, Levin said, "There is no gap."

As someone more knowledgeable than me on another forum eloquently put it:

The F-22 was more of a research project put into production because of it's gee-whiz capabilities, the F-35 offers a platform to refine those capabilities in a much more capable product for the threats that we face.

My understanding is that the F-22 is much superior as an air-superiority fighter, but the F-35 has more air to ground capabilities. The difficulty with the F-22 is that the F-15 is still the most dominant air superiority fighter in the world, and because of the cost involved in making anythign remotely better, is likely to stay that way for a good long time. The "Super Power" enemies, such as they are, relied on a greater number of less capable aircraft because they couldn't afford the price of the nicer aircraft. So in some ways, the cost of the F-22 making fewer units practical plays into the hypothetical "Super Powers" hand.

The other factor to maintaining air superiority is the AWACS platforms which can direct the air war over very large distances. I think the West, and the US in particular has a huge advantage in that as well. Plus, as far as protecting our airspace goes, mounting air to air missiles on UAVs is just as easy as air to ground. So we would likely use those to counter any numerical superiority that our hypothetical "Super Power" posses as well.

Finally, FWIW, I subscribe to the two level theory of war. The first level is the infantry, the second level is everything else: it exists to support the infantry since only the infantry can take and hold ground. Artillery, sea power, aviation, even tanks can deny the enemy ground, but only the infantry can hold it. So more A-10s putting more ordance where the infantry needs it seems a better deal than F-22's holding air superiority over a non-existant enemy air force. IMHO.

Yes, the F-22 is primarily an air superiority craft, and the F-35 is intended to fill a more all-purpose role. The F-15, however, is no match [wikipedia.org] for either of the newer craft:

The JSF program was designed to replace the U.S. military's F-16, A-10, F/A-18 (excluding F/A-18E/F) and AV-8B tactical fighter aircraft. To keep development, production, and operating costs down, a common design was planned in three variants that share 80% of their parts:

The F-35 is intended to be the world's premier strike aircraft through 2040, with close- and long-range air-to-air capability second only to that of the F-22 Raptor.[5] The F-35 is required to be four times more effective than existing fighters in air-to-air combat, eight times more effective in air-to-ground battle combat, and three times more effective in reconnaissance and suppression of air defenses â" all while having better range and requiring less logistics support.

Admittedly, Wikipedia is not the best resource, but it is the most easily accessible at the moment and the information is consistent with my knowledge of the craft.

Anyway, the F-22 vs. F-35 argument is one between people that want the absolute best craft they can get for the role they need to fill and more money/practicality-oriented people. Both sides have merit, but money is winning out in this case, I suspect largely because of the investment in the F-35 as an 'everything' craft.

Finally, of course you need multiple support levels for any combat-type situation. I'm not sure why you brought that up.

I would certainly hope and expect that both the F-35 and F-22 would be superior to the F-15. My point was that no one else has anything yet that can compete with an F-15. My thought was that since the F-22 is really only for air to air combat, and there's no real opponent for what we already have, that it is filling a need we don't really have. That the F-35 does both, supports that even more.

I brought up the multiple support levels because the F-22 is extremely expensive for filling a role that isn't actually needed. It was meant to convey how far from supporting the troops its purpose is when compared to toher aircraft.

The whole needing F-22s if we ever get into a conventional war with a Great Power thing is a canard. Great Powers have nuclear weapons, so conventional wars aren't possible; we send in F-22s and 8 hours later half the planet is glass.

Conventional fighting these days is done against guys hiding in caves in third-world countries, and the F-22 does precisely nothing to help in those scenarios.

The whole needing F-22s if we ever get into a conventional war with a Great Power thing is a canard. Great Powers have nuclear weapons, so conventional wars aren't possible; we send in F-22s and 8 hours later half the planet is glass.

You'll be eating those words when China unveils their brand new designed-in-secret anti-ICBM system.

Besides which, your entire argument is flawed. Even in the current environment it's entirely possible to have limited non-nuclear engagements which do not lead to nuclear war. I've heard your argument used before to try and justify the elimination of nearly all military forces. The idea goes something like:

"Why bother having soldiers when we have Nukes? Who would attack us?"

The problem is that, when the only tool you have is a hammer, you'd better hope every problem is a nail. What happens if a foreign nation decides to seize all your commercial aircraft - do you nuke them? What if they encroach on your coastal waters and scare away your commercial sea-going traffic? What if they just decide to occupy, say, Alaska? Is that a good enough reason to launch? The whole idea behind having a versatile military is that you can deal with each scenario in a reasonable manner, and resolve it with as little force as possible. Having overwhelming force is nice, but it does you no good unless you're crazy enough to use it at the smallest provocation.

U.S. Imports from China accounted for about $338 billion in 2008 [census.gov]. Exports were about $70 billion. The U.S. GDP in 2008 was about $14.2 trillion, so trade with China accounted for about 2.9% of the U.S. economy. China holds about $800 billion in U.S. treasury securities [treas.gov]. Even if you add that (which you shouldn't since it's a dollar amount while the other figures are dollars/year, but let's do it since we're talking about them hypothetically dumping all their securities on the market), China's impact on the U.S. GDP is only 8.5%.

China's GDP in 2008 $3.9-$4.4 trillion [wikipedia.org], so their trade with the U.S. accounted for about 9.3%-10.5% of their economy.

The whole needing F-22s if we ever get into a conventional war with a Great Power thing is a canard. Great Powers have nuclear weapons, so conventional wars aren't possible; we send in F-22s and 8 hours later half the planet is glass.

Conventional fighting these days is done against guys hiding in caves in third-world countries, and the F-22 does precisely nothing to help in those scenarios.

Actually, that was the thinking after WWII, armies would not be needed because of nukes, navies would no longer be needed, etc. But the way it worked out, nobody wanted to risk all out nuclear warfare so we saw proxy wars fought all over the place, Korea and Vietnam and Afghanistan and the like. The presence of nukes means that conventional wars probably won't become all-out world wars for risk of someone popping a nuke but it won't push all warfare out of consideration.

I'm extremely hard-pressed to imagine a scenario where we would be in an all-out technology war, the kind that Tom Clancy wetdreams about. As you said, they're all brush-fire wars right now with our opponents being decidedly low-tech. China's about the only scenario I can imagine with a high-tech war breaking out and that's still unlikely because we wouldn't dare risk fighting the guys who hold all our debt and sell us all our cheap plastic shit.

History is replete with examples of nations not properly assessing their threats and getting blindsided. But usually not everyone is surprised. A good example is with Japan. Pearl Harbor was a bolt from the blue for people who weren't paying attention to foreign affairs. It was not a surprise to the Navy who had been conducting exercises against mock Japanese forces for years, aka the "orange" navy. The Navy's only surprise was that the attack happened at Pearl and not in the Philippines. Congress had authorized more war spending in the period leading up to WWII but were slow about it because they still believed that Isolationism might still work.

But seriously, the F-22 is a cold war vestige and simply does not accurately reflect the current state of the battlefield. Shit, they were conducting the fly-off back when I was in jr. high! I think it was around '90 or so that they picked the 22 over the 23. I know this is some complex shit we're talking about but it still shouldn't take this long and cost this much.

Should we ever find ourselves in a conflict with another Great Power we may well come to regret this decision.

Why? The plane is already designed with 140 already built. Should the need arise, we could obviously ramp production back up much, much faster than (e.g.) China could design, test, and build a large number of competing aircraft. (The bid process for the F22 began in 1986 [wikipedia.org] for cripe's sake!) Instead, what's happening is these potential rivals are plowing their resources into economic growth and

Oh, come on. The only country with an air force REMOTELY competitive with the US is Russia, and if the US and Russia ever get in a war, a lot of good a few stealth fighters will be. There is a REASON the superpowers haven't fought a real war since WWII. Did you miss the whole Cold War thing?

In terms of AF size, China comes in a distant second (about 1/3 the size of the US, and made up largely of ancient MiG21s)

Plus, the US has *12* nuclear powered supercarriers that can take about 90 aircraft each anywhere in the world. Take just 4 of those carriers and it outnumbers the entire air force of all but about 10 countries worldwide.

Congress made the right decision. We have spent trillions of dollars on mega-defense projects and equipment has largely been totally unnecessary apart from a show of force to the rest of the world. The fact is, US really doesn't need to keep building $140M fighter planes in today's political landscape (the USAF already has over 180 of them!) Which is good, because we can't AFFORD to anyway...

I'm not sure if you're joking, so... the F-22 is superior to the F-35. Two engines instead of one. Larger payload. Stealth capability. There's no comparison. That's why the US was happy to share the F-35 with other nations, while the F-22 was a closely kept secret.

That's not strictly true - the F-22 has a decent internal carriage capability. It can carry two JDAMs plus four missiles internally. For strategic bombing missions that's plenty. If you want saturation bombing, get yourself a B-52:)

But yes, your general point is correct - expanding it's payload beyond that does tend to lose you the stealth characteristics.

France isn't known for checking with us before they sell military hardware, either.

Actually the worst offender in this arena isn't France or Russia -- it's our "major ally" Israel. At least when the French and Russians sell hardware to our adversaries they are selling stuff that they designed with their own resources. The Israeli's are all to happy to sell stuff that we designed.

A couple of enterprising guys in Israel sold classified US tank targeting technology to China which was then onsold to Iran and widely deployed. There was a US Senate inquiry about it in 2000 I think. That is probably one of the incidents the above poster is referring to.

Careful. Keep saying stuff like that, and you'll be branded an anti-Semite. After all, if you don't mindlessly support everything Israel does, you must hate Jews. Just like if you didn't support everything the Bush did, you must hate Caucasians.

It's kinda scary how accurate that is. I'm Jewish, but I don't agree with everything the Israeli government has done, just like I don't agree with everything the United States government does (it was more frequent with Bush, but I have no problems calling out Democrats when they do something I don't agree with, or just say something stupid, which is almost as frequent as with Bush). Of course, I'm a peace-loving hippie, so there are fairly large groups in the Israeli government that are too militaristic for my taste. It does discourage me to hear people say "we must always support everything Israel does." As far as I'm concerned, the ability to honestly criticize the government when they screw up is an important part of any healthy, free state.

We did eventually overwhelm the Japanese with numbers as well. By that time we also had better planes for the most part. And unlike any of the Axis forces we had 100 octane avgas. The best Japanese fighters outperformed our Mustangs, Hellcats and even Corsairs, when we ran captured examples on our fuel. But in Japanese service they were castrated by low octane fuel. We also trained our pilots better. The Japanese started the war with lots of experienced pilots, but their replacements had no more than 20 hours in the air. Our own replacements were very well trained. The great Japanese Ace Sakai Saburo used to say the Japanese Navy viewed pilots as consumables. He also had this to say about American tactics,

I don't think they were as skilled in individual combat as the Japanese were. But the boom-and-zoom tactics they developed to take advantage of the Zero's inability to dive well were very effective.

I am confident that Japanese pilots were superior on a one-on-one basis. But the ability to work as a team both offensively and defensively that the Americans had was very impressive. Perhaps this comes from the team spirit and thinking they developed playing American football. This hit us particularly hard in the air engagements from the middle war onwards (teamwork and search patterns).

That second quote referred to the Thach Weave, which BTW does not rely on superior numbers. It is a method for forcing double teams. Boom n' zoom refers to restricting your engagements to situations where you possess superior energy. Basically it means attacking in a dive and breaking off immediately, only re-engaging when you have regained your altitude advantage.

There were a lot of other factors too, such as the Japanese lack of usable radios.

Interesting? Wrong more like. The cost of the program is $39,000M + 187 * $130M. The marginal cost per plane is $130M. $209M of the $339M is the upfront R&D costs, and that money has already been spent./. should replace the new account captcha with a math exam.

So, now the F-22 is nothing more than a jobs program? A regular GOP stimulus package, huh?

How about we take the money and have those same people build high speed rail? The jobs will last longer and Americans will actually benefit. Plus, high-speed trains have a use beyond killing people (though, to be fair, the F-22 is probably the least efficient way to kill someone ever devised).

Also, an interesting point from that conversation (IIRC), was that The computer in the F22 is unhackable because It's based on 1989 IBM code, and most modern military jamming/hacking equipment doesn't know how to obstruct code that old.

The F-22 is a no-compromises air superiority fighter. Engineers will immediately understand this means plenty of compromises in other roles you want fighter aircraft to perform. It's built to do one thing: destroy aircraft. It's useless against ground targets, and adapting it to his role would be silly given that we'll be building the cheaper, more versatile and hopefully more reliable F-35.

If the F-22 is ever called on to do what it was built for, it will be worth every penny of its $300+ million dollar price tag -- up to a point. I've heard it called a "first day of the war fighter". It's job is to clear the skies of all hostile aircraft, after which the F-35 follows up and performs a wide variety of war fighting tasks. If this scenario works the way it is supposed to, then at some point adding more F-22s is pointless. Imagine enemy fighters are plaque and the F-22 is a toothbrush. Brushing your teeth for ten minutes is very good for you; brushing for twenty minutes isn't any better for and costs twice as much.

The F-22 is a one trick pony, but it's a pretty damn good trick if you ever need it done. But we simply don't need that many of them if it works. If it doesn't work, then it's a big waste of money to build more.

The F-22 is a cool plane, but there are only so many the US really needs. Reason is that they are not carrier based planes, which is how a great many missions are done these days. It also is more or less strictly air superiority, not multi-role. Ok well there is value in that, while there may not be any current threats to the US, doesn't mean there won't be. You don't have good defense, in the real world or on your computer, by staying complacent. However that doesn't mean that there is the need or reason to roll out tons of the things.

The F-35 is more suited to a larger scale production because it is multi-role, and carrier capable. Thus with it likely to come out soon (next year if they remain on target) it doesn't make sense to produce a ton of F-22As. The F-35 also has the advantage of having a good deal of support from other nations, which helps pay for R&D and will also bring unit costs down in the form of increased orders.

So it makes sense to keep the F-22 around for when top-notch air defense is needed, it doesn't make sense to keep building them if an all around more useful plane is going to be coming out. Use what is complete, and use the research from the project on other projects (like the F-35).

In terms of what makes a good air superiority fighter these days, it is a number of things:

1) Stealth. If the enemy can't see you, they can't shoot at you. Thus if your aircraft has a low radar signature and thermal signature, you have an upper hand. That was one of the big design characteristics of the F-22A. You'll notice that it very rarely has weapons on the outside. The missiles are instead kept in internal bays. The bays pop open, eject a missile and close quickly. Makes it a hard aircraft to find.

2) Maneuverability. Even though you aren't dodging bullets any more, dodging is still important. This is in part because no matter how good a missile is, it can still be fooled and evaded. However it is more because to get a missile off, a plane has to have another plane in its sights. So you need to maneuver behind the other guy, then he can't shoot you and you can shoot him.

3) Communications. This is important for any military vehicle, but particularly fighter craft. A bomber can very well be given targets back at the base and then sent on its way. It follows a pre setup flight plan, unless it has to evade enemy fire. Not so for a fighter. Your objective is to track the enemy fighters/bombers and engage them. More, you want to approach them in such a way they don't notice you. Well having an AWACS tell you where to go via radio is good. Having the AWACS directly cross link target and navigation data to your computer is better (the F-22A does this). Having fighters than can then take over and act as mini-AWACS in the event an AWACS is lost or unavailable is even better (the F-22A does this too). You need to be able to locate targets and coordinate an attack.

4) Speed. Part of what makes a good fighter good is the ability to be where it needs to be, when it needs to be there. If you've incoming attack craft, you don't have the luxury of waiting. You need to hit them before they are in range of their target. Means your craft has to be able to go extremely fast when needed, even if that means having less payload.

So it isn't as though multi-role craft can't play fighter, and indeed they do, it is just that you can optimize a craft for the fighter role. Same deal with a bomber. The B-2B is a good example of a pure bomber. It can't defend itself, it is slow, it is larger, etc. All it does is drop a LOT of bombs, and do so unnoticed (hopefully).

The F-35 should hopefully be the jack of all trades. Should be a good fighter, good bomber, good attack craft and so on. However as such it is likely to never be quite as good a pure fighter as the F-22A.

The problem with that is you have to get in range to do so. Missiles do not have an unlimited range. So you have to move your ship or aircraft in launch range. Well, carriers have enormous force projection, and good intelligence assets. So getting your stuff in range is not an easy proposition. You are contenting with a carrier air wing which is two squadrons each of F/A-18 hornets and super hornets as well as the intelligence craft, a destroyer squadron, aegis cruisers, guided missile destroyers and two 68

Reading the title and summary would make you think that the entire program has been cancelled and the planes aren't going to be used by the US military. This is not the case. The Senate reduced the number of aircraft being produced such that no additional planes will be made.

And even that may be a bit misleading; the Senate eliminated funding for 7 additional F-22s that were proposed to be ordered, limiting the total run to 187, which includes not just planes which have already been delivered but also some that have previously been ordered which have not yet been delivered, so it is not the case that "no additional planes will be made", at least if by "additional" one means "additional to those that have already been made", rather than "additional to the ones already planned to be made".

The F14 is a good cautionary tale for the F22. They were expensive, high-strung, kick-butt air superiority fighters. And they saw more action in Top Gun than they ever saw in real life. The total number of engagements by the entire fleet of F14's you could count on one hand.

I do believe in designing and building these things to stay sharp, but not thousands of copies in peacetime. (And yes, this is "peacetime" so far as the F22 is concerned - they have flown 0 sorties over Iraq and Afghanistan, and why would they?)

no it wont. it requires extensive upgrades because the RAM or the skin of the aircraft cannot survive a rainstorm. it does not have a working heads up display on the helmet. the canopy blisters and peels with exposure to sunlight. it does not communicate with other aircraft because the electronics are deficient. it requires 44 HOURS of maint for every hour in the air. the raptor is a pile of crap and will eventually be phased out.

So it is a high maintenance dry night fighter. Reminds me of my girlfriend...

That's a nice twist of the numbers that is severly warped because of initial one time costs. If you compare it by calendar year as the plane approaches maturity you see 2008 numbers of 18H/1H, and so far in 2009 that is down to 10.5H. Keep in mind that the contractual requirements are 12H/1H once the plane reaches 'maturity', which is 2010. This is a goofy number anyway because it has more to do with how they pace it. It's not like someone has a monkey wrench on it for 3 days straight if it flies for 4 hours.

As another comparison, the cost per hour in 2008 was $19K, compared to the F15 which was $17k. History shows that this typically goes down as the plane matures and is ironed out

I'm not arguing it shouldn't have been cancelled, but to outright bash it isn't being honest either. I'm hoping we don't find ourselves in a situation where we were wishing it hadn't been canceled because that means we're in a much bigger mess than we currently are in Iraq/Af.

I'm hoping we don't find ourselves in a situation where we were wishing it hadn't been canceled because that means we're in a much bigger mess than we currently are in Iraq/Af.

What situation can you see the US Air Force in where it has a serious contender to air superiority versus even the F-15, which has a spotless air-to-air kill ratio against what most countries currently on the US's shitlist are flying? Much less along with the 187 flying F-22's? I mean, a hypothetical war with China might need it, but they're still flying original-model Su-27 derivatives while they design their own indigenous fighter, the Shenyang J-XX [wikipedia.org]. With good enough pilots, they can seriously ruin an F-15's day, but with the F-22's already built, there should be more than enough firepower to take out something like that. I mean, there could be trouble if Russia decided to fully rebuild its air force with its recuperating economy and try a show of force against the USA, but what are the odds of that happening? Hell, China's not very likely either. The only foreseeable conflicts in the near future might be Iran and/or North Korea, and they're both still flying older-generation aircraft that the F-15 has shot down in the past. In terms of equipment, the playing field is already level, unless you're thinking that the USA's going to square off against Eurofighters or something.

Considering that they fly far above the clouds, the rainstorm shouldn't pose much of a problem.

Really? Do they take off and land from 25,000 feet, too?

Each one of these planes requires 44 hours of maintenance for every hour in the air, as someone has already mentioned. They are obsolete, and they have gone over budget by a factor of 3 or more.

The F-22 is now, and has always been, a boondoggle granted to military contractors by lawmakers who get large contributions from those contractors. As far as I know, no F-22 has ever flown a combat mission. They cost hundreds of millions of dollars and have never been used.

Meanwhile, we fight over whether a working family should have the god-given right to go bankrupt if one of their members gets sick.

The F-22 fought with some distinction against the decepticons in Transformers. They suffered heavy losses, but the proof of their effectiveness as shown in this documentary was enough to convince congress to keep funding the project.

There are also several novels out there that provide additional hard proof of their combat effectiveness.

I don't know why they went with the F-22 over the "F-23" anyway. It was a better plane on many levels...

Both planes met USAF requirements. One was produced by Lockheed, the company that had recently delivered the F-117 on-time and under budget. The other by Northrop, which had suffered delays and extreme cost overruns on the B-2, and McDonnell Douglas, which was having even greater problems with the A-12 bomber (the DoD would eventually sue them over this one).

The plane may have been better, but the companies behind it where not. Since both planes met requirements and were good aircraft, DoD chose the company with the better track record.

They've already got 187 of them. All they did was cancel an order for an additional 12 that were budgetted last year.
The summary would lead you to believe they're moth-balling all of them or something.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/F-22_Raptor [wikipedia.org]

With the way the gov't is throwing money I'm surprised anything under a billion registers on their radar. They've probably got rounding errors (intentional or not) that could pay for a whole squadron of these.

How bad-ass? This badass [youtube.com]. The link is to a YouTube video where the guy who had the initial design ideas talks about getting the plane together, and the video features some awesome footage of the F-35's capabilities.

RIP F-22, you were cool and did a great job. The F-35 is a worthy replacement.

The F-35 was not designed as a replacement, but as a compliment to the F-22.

The F-22 has one mission, dominate the airspace and kill other fighters. As the video probably shows, the F-35 is designed as a multi-role/configuration fighter. And yes, it is bad ass. It is very cheap (inexpensive) and is a good asset.

But watch out, as I said earlier, the Russians are still build fighters and they are pretty good at it.

The F-35 isn't really a raptor replacement, it is a supplement. The F-22 is still likely to be the best air superiority fighter. However, that is really all it is good for. It is land based only, and not really suited for multi-role operations. It CAN be fitted to do bombing but not near as well as the F-35.

So what is likely to happen is the F-22 will remain active in air defense roles, whereas the F-35 will become the principal aircraft used for strike missions. However, you really don't need so many air-d

And it's funny too. People who don't like unions, bloated government and stimulus packages seem to think the government owes them a job when it comes to flawed weapons systems and unneeded military bases.

But it's nice to see A10s and B52s still in service. Made dack when the US actually knew how to build something.

But it's nice to see A10s and B52s still in service. Made dack when the US actually knew how to build something.

The A-10 has been upgraded multiple times, it's hardly the same aircraft that rolled off the production lines in the 70's.

The B-52's have been upgraded and modified so many times, we've paid for each individual aircraft probably ten times over. So much of the original structure and systems have been replaced that the only original item on them is probably the nameplate.

The F-22 is already in service! They just cancelled the next order of planes.

I agree with this decision. The F-35 is still a better fighter than just about anything else out there, and is also an excellent multi-role attack craft. Not to mention much cheaper per unit than an F-22.

The value of the F-22 lies in that it is probably the best fighter in the world for many years. Any adversary who intends to fight a conventional war against the US (cricket... cricket... but hey, we do expect our military to be prepared, so I'm not complaining) has to act as if the most badass fighter in the world will be contesting air superiority. That is a healthy kick towards solving things with diplomacy.

Fighters are needed less and less now a days, if we want air superiority we can just put up dozens of cheap drones with Air-to-Air missiles with remote pilots. I am pretty sure they would not cost $100+ millions each either.

Your not risky the life of a pilot who can take hundreds of hours to train properly

A modern plane can do more than a pilot can physically handle so are better vehicles without a pilot

Don't require a full scale airport or carrier to land/launch from. Landing on an aircraft carrier is one of the most difficult tasks a pilot has to accomplish regularly. A drone can be launched from a small ship and who cares if it lands intact again.

If you look at when they actually are producing F35 vs F22 at nearly identical production rates, F22 is only a little bit more expensive. The main reason why F35 is projected to be significantly cheaper is they are planning on producing more of them at faster rates.

F-35 Flyaway Unit Cost
FY2011: $124.580 million (24 per year)

F-22 Flyaway Unit Cost
FY2007: $136.826 million (20 per year)

A bird in the hand is better than 2 in the bush. I'd bet F35 ends up costing just as much as F22.

These programs have become unsustainable. There's no reason for the F-22 to cost what it does. We're talking about runaway projects with padding to line the pockets of the military-industrial complex. This isn't about protecting the nation, this is about extracting wealth from the treasury. Defense contractors are doing more to harm the safety and security of this country than the long-haired hippies ever did.

The F-15 is still a world-beater. Why not just upgrade the avionics and fire up the assembly lines again? Retire the old airframes, field new ones.

My vote as a former USAF intel analyst is that this is a good move. We have plenty of them already and we can put that money to use in myriad other ways, for defense and other purposes. The 22 is bad ass and worth every penny, but i'd rather see more spent on HumInt or humanitarian stuff.

The pricetag on all this fancy military hardware goes up to beyond reasonable returns. We're losing the war to Al-Queda where their costs are nearly nothing (I suppose sending a fundamentalist nutjob to suicide bomber school is rather cheap) and the 2 Billion dollar bomber (The B-2 Spirit) crashes in 2008 in Guam on the way to fight him. As a taxpayer I think we need to say enough is enough and I think Congress is seeing the light. As far as I'm concerned, "slightly less capable, and far less expensive" is the exact tact we need to take as a country in the midst of a crippling recession.

Until Al-Queda grows an Air Force what's wrong with our fleet of 80's movie aircraft (the F-15, F-16, etc) The Soviet Union doesn't exist anymore. North Korea? What are they flying these days? MIG 29S's (their few but modern units - which match to the F-15) and MIG 21's (a Vietnam era unit)

I dunno, but didn't the Nazis lose with the current "Overengineering, exepensive and too few versus" principle the US is using today to the "Just barely good enough, cheap and lots of them" principle we had in WWII? The Tiger vs the Sherman?

During war time, there should be no profit driven motivation for developing the military, period.

War industry employees should all work for subsistence wages, and really should be volunteers if not draftees. Industrial business should not even be allowed to take profits for the duration of war. If they must be paid, they should be paid in interest bearing war bonds that are redeemable upon victory. Take away the profit-driven parts of the equation, from raw materials down to workers being paid more than subsistence wages, and I'm sure the cost of these airplanes will be considerably lower per unit.

The stakes should be "winning the war so that the nation can continue to exist", not something that's even measurable in monetary value.

You don't build them to use them, you build them so you don't have to use them. You also force anyone who thinks they need to counter them to spend resources on developing and deploying the countermeasures.

Perhaps. But the 10th Amendment suggests that health care and education should be a state responsibility (if at all). People make a big deal of the Canadian health care system, but there's an important point: the Canadian health care system is not run by the Canadian federal government. Each province runs its own health care system. For example, the Alberta health care system operated very much like a private insurer until this year, whereas in Nova Scotia it is more like a traditional universal health care

Only because the U.S. doctrine has been to have total air superiourity and the Air Force (and Navy) have been able to achieve it through superiour technology (and training) --- if 187 Raptors aren't sufficient to achieve that in some future conflict, a lot of soldiers are going to die, and that statement will cease to be true.

William

Yeah - or you could just stop invading countries. That's a good way of keeping your soldiers from dying.

A good way to solve this would be to stop being the world police and pissing everyone off. If we were just cool with people we easily get by with 10% of the defense budget we have now. Besides, I am sure that if we spent less on military and more on social programs we can save more civilians than we would lose soldiers. This whole nationalist, jingoist, fascist thing that the neo-Cons call Patriotism makes me throw up a little.

A good way to solve this would be to stop being the world police and pissing everyone off.

So you think that America would be better off for that? You may be right, it's hard to say. I wonder though at the 'pissing everyone off' part being better for everyone else.

America has certainly done a lot of damage around the world, but they've also done a lot of good. I'd say, on the whole, it has been more good than bad. At the end, some nation, somewhere, is going to have the strongest military. For all my problems with America, I can't pick a different nation I'd rather see as the strongest. Unfortunately the real world doesn't require that a perfect, or even good option exist, merely a choice of options from which you take what you can get and try to improve upon it. In my book America is a better starting point than any other nation.

I also am sure many would argue about the world being better off if America just minded it's own business. For all that people argue the good America has done in removing or fighting worse governments/dictators, the other side declares it would be better if America did not do so, that things would be better if those wars were not fought. For proof one can easily point to Africa and the fact America has no interest there because there is no profit in it. This would seem to prove that America is acting selfishly. I would point out that just because it is selfish, doesn't mean that it isn't also in the better interest of the civilians of the affected region. Disagree? Look no further than the original example. Which region is better off, the American manipulated Middle-East or the Africa it ignores?

For every Saddam that America is damned for warring against, there is an African genocide like Rwanda it is not being damned for ignoring. I used to be alongside the peaceniks in damning America for going into Iraq because they failed to go into a place like Darfur where people needed the help even more. I've now realized that if I really think they should be damned for not going into Darfur, it was contradictory to damn them for removing a genocidal dictator like Saddam.

What is your definition of being "just cool with people"? Do you really believe that the world will stop hating America if America stops meddling in other nations' affairs? What are your thoughts on interfering when a state-sponsored genocide is in progress? There is no happy medium. Large portions of the world are going to hate the United States of America no matter its foreign policy. You can't make everyone happy, and you certainly can't do it when they have already come to depend on you for one thing or another. It would not surprise me to see America the target of more hatred and violent attacks after returning to isolationism than in its most internationally-meddling times.

Even if everyone in the US unanimously decided that we were no longer going to meddle in international affairs other nations will inevitably drag us back into them due to the simple fact that we're an economic superpower. It's unavoidable.

And the US government already spends plenty on social programs. The problem, like with this F-22 program, is that the money isn't being spent wisely. The US in general already spends more on education per student than most countries, and many areas, including the city where I live spends close to double what any other country spends. And yet education is by and large crap compared to other countries. The reason isn't because we're not spending enough money, it's because we're not managing anything properly and have this idiotic notion that more money will fix anything.

And back to my original point, there are a lot of nations out there that could potentially become a threat in the future. I realize some people hold the believe that love will fix anything, but there are many more who disagree and may try to take advantage. China might currently be behind the US, but they sure are working hard to catch up, working on their own advanced fighter. Russia may not currently be a threat to the US, but they are working hard on their own competitors to the F22 and will certainly be selling the aircraft to China.

That said, it made sense to cut back the F-22 program although it really is a drop in the bucket compared to how much the government is spending.

Invalid. A great deal of the problems in the rest of the world are due to them being systematically held back by the first world to achieve a political and economic goal. Using this as evidence of our superiority is not just incorrect, it's deplorable.

Please provide proof. How are we holding them back? Who is we? Why have India and China succeeded the more they embrace evil capitalist ideals?

if 187 Raptors aren't sufficient to achieve that in some future conflict

Which conflict would that be? It's not the ones we are in now, which we're going into astronomical debt over. I don't know who has an air force that would rival us, but I'd guess China and North Korea. Either way, we can't afford it even with these cuts. In fact, I think/hope we can't afford to fight ANY more unilateral wars against ANYONE.

Any war/conflict in which 187 raptors is insufficient is a war our economy is also insufficient for.

The push for producing less F-22's comes from the DoD not the congress critters. In fact it had a hard time getting through because the opposition to reducing the production run was bipartisan. The opposition primarily came from representatives that have a vested interest in the continuation of the F-22 production, as in parts are made or assembled by their constituents.

Wow - it's not paranoia if everyone really is out to get you, right? Get at least your facts straight. Republicans and Democracts voted for the bill, and Republicans and Democrats voted against it. Not to mention that Gates, a Republican, Air Force and Joint Chief of Staffs didn't want to continue the purchase program. I don't know how you lump those people into the group of Obama's lunatic lefties.

The Lightning is seriously cool but it simple cannot replace the Raptor - and it was never meant to, except, it appears, in the minds of Democrats.

This democrat wants to know if there's any reason to care about replacing them. You mentioned it's half the size and has a third of the weapons payload. Is it just the phallic symbolism that you are upset about?

Thank you, Congress, for sacrificing the nation's safety so you can buy up the problems of those who make bad decisions. Not going to sacrifice power for their bad decisions, t.

Actually, the people who were OPPOSED to continued F-22 production include the Secretary of Defense, the Secretary of the Air Force, and other top brass. The only people who are FOR the continued production are members of Congress whose districts include the defense contractors who build the plane, and those contractors themselves.